A Proud Marine Channels Anger To Another War

October 05, 1992|By SUSAN CAMPBELL; Courant Snapshots Columnist

Stephen Shepard was a good Marine.

He even brought home a medal he earned on one of his three island invasions during the Pacific theater of World War II. He didn't particularly want the commendation -- he was just doing his job -- but his family insisted.

He fought the whole war and came home to Riverdale, N.Y., to live his life.

Except his life wasn't easy anymore, and he couldn't rely on the Marine training that had served him so well on the other side of the world. After the confetti was swept up, no one was interested that he could march and salute with precision.

But he looked around and watched his buddies pound each other on the back and talk wistfully of the lives they'd led over there. They seemed fine, and he was, after all, a man proven in combat.

So he got on with what should have been a comfortable life that included two beautiful daughters.

Sure, he was sad about the war. When things were quiet, the realization would come: He'd killed people. The guilt would rise, and he would mash it back down.

He began a slow spiral into depression. If that kind of thing can happen, what's the point of the nice little house with the nice little car?

What helped pull him out was his family. Those daughters were both anchors and lifelines. Stephen began to look into their eyes and see the future. He started reading -- he went through and underlined a good part of the self-help book "Your Erroneous Zones" -- and he attended a speech at Yale University by Helen Caldicott, an Australian pediatrician who was responsible for turning the attention of Physicians for Social Responsibility to nuclear disarmament.

He couldn't change the past, but he could do something now. He got involved in peace activism. Every Wednesday lunch hour for six years, he and friends held a peace vigil in downtown Bloomfield. They waved flags and stood while people honked or booed. Toward the end, more people honked than not. Anywhere from 10 to 50 people

would show up. And he began to talk about the war -- nearly 50 years later, and usually with tears.

They don't hold a vigil anymore. The protesters were getting older. Some moved away.

Stephen and his activist partner, Jean Petty, whom he met on a hike 17 years ago, have been around the world on peace visits. On Friday, they'll go to Nevada with Promoting Enduring Peace, a Canton group, to protest nuclear testing on Western Shoshone Indian land. People from around the world are expected to descend on the desert to protest an activity for which the government has set aside $102 billion this year alone.

Why -- in this era of no walls or fences -- is the government still doing nuclear testing?

Stephen can't say. The anger that once sent him into depression is still there. When a good friend of his insists there's nothing that can be done, Stephen's voice gets hard, and he reminds the friend about his grandchildren and says, "You are going to let this happen to them? Preposterous."

He can understand -- a little -- his friend's lethargy. He remembers his denial after World War II, when he was among the walking wounded and didn't even know it. His friend doesn't understand the enormity of the problem. His friend has been trained to follow the herd instinct, so Stephen recites a list of individuals -- Gandhi, Jonas Salk, Rosa Parks -- who made a difference. Rosa just had tired feet and wasn't going to stand on that bus. And look what happened.

Looking back, Stephen is ambivalent about his Marine experience. At the time, he was proud of his duty well done. And he says now that if someone were to come into his home to hurt Jean, he would meet violence with violence. Perhaps that disqualifies him as a pacifist. He doesn't know.

But he draws the line at nuclear bombs, with their threat of radiation and impossible storage problems and deaths of the "down-winders" -- the innocents in this country and others who've died after being inadvertently exposed to radiation.

While he's out west, his group, the Bloomfield Citizens for Global Security, has before the town a resolution calling for a new emphasis on "social good and a healthy environment," and a de-emphasis on the military budget.